fifty / fifty
by halfhearted
Summary: read these words with a patient heart. in this story i leave to future generations everything they need to know to become full fledged gondoliers.


She was kneeling in the dirt, her headgear slightly askew

some of it's made up... well all of it, really. this is obviously riddle and gren at the dragoon graves. it's short so you have no excuse for not reading. :P

::fifty / fifty::

She was kneeling in the dirt, her headgear slightly askew. As bothersome a chore as these weekly visitations were, he found them electrifying in the degree of intimacy it brought to their relationship. He coveted her nursemaid Gyra, longing to exchange roles with her and thus be the one that kissed that darling cheek goodnight. The wind was soft, the bouquet of light blue flowers swayed but he gripped them so hard his hands would have bled had he not been wearing gloves.

He was standing behind her, slightly to the left as she raised her ivory fingers and placed each hand on a red-veined cheek, framing her face in a sort of reflective, distraught pose. Although he couldn't see it, he knew exactly what that face looked like, had seen it a thousand times since his brother died and would see it every night of his life probably – when he was alone and clawing at the sheets for some kind of affection to envaginate his soul, it was she that came to the rescue, though only on the snow-white wings of his imagination. He could see her backbone through the dress as she knelt. In the very instant that impression entered into his mind and for that instant only, he became her and could feel the material against his backbone and could feel how, drawn taut by the hips, it stretched across her waist and because it was a dress, the sensation of air and loose cotton gently kissed the upper part of his legs for the smallest fraction of a second, but this was fading too and was altogether erased, quite suddenly, when she stood up and turned around in one languid, supple motion.

"Did you bring the bellflowers?" she asked, her voice like the sound of a fallen leaf blowing across a playground.

"Mm. Right here. Should I?"

"That's alright. Thank you."

"Mm."

And he passed on the bouquet to her, hoping that none of the still fresh, moist stems would stick to his gloves. She looked not at him or at his gloves but at the fragrant bouquet, the one thing that had stayed constant throughout the years since her betrothed had died. Indeed, she would not even notice if anything wet clung to his glove. She merely let her face go blank, staring at the blossoms of the bellflowers, abstracted. He thought that if he reached his hand out to take hold of her shoulder, to turn her around, to make her see, it might pass through as immaterial. He shuddered.

She knelt again, and wrapping her slender fingers around a knotted clump of weeds pulled them up and tossed them aside. Where last week's bellflowers had been there were now only a few mottled stems and closed, shriveled buds.

"They didn't last very long."

She cleared the mess away and laid the new bouquet on top, leaning them against the tombstone. A petal from the acacias overhead drifted down to the top of the marker and slipped off the marble edge, landing amidst the bellflowers freshly laid. She saw it and reached into the bouquet, deftly plucking it out between her middle and ring finger. In this fashion she turned around, stood and held the flimsy thing up to the boy's chin, lightly drawing it across his still smooth skin with her tongue pressed to the roof of her mouth in the sibilant image of a snake. He noticed for the first time that day that her eyes were alight. Muted, perhaps, but not listless and unresponsive as before.

"Come on. Dario wouldn't want you to be all grumpy when you came to see him."

He noticed for the first time that his jaw ached. He'd been gritting his teeth since they arrived at the shrines and the solemn look had not once left his face. He coloured and looked away. She saw that he suppressed a smile. He turned back to her.

"I'm sorry, I try to be serious but I guess I let it take me over," he said, crossing his arms and raising a hand to his cheek, trying to hide his face a bit, as well as the jaw muscles that undulated, clamping and unclamping endlessly.

"Back... before," she said, "you weren't ever serious. And we laughed and laughed. Just the three of us had the best time."

He turned away again, demurring, and not even a thunderbolt could move him then. She giggled. The sound of her laughter flitted away into the wind like butterflies.

"Well, you're just as shy about the important things as ever, aren't you? Thank you for the bellflowers."

"You're welcome."

The figure beneath her dress appeared before his eyes as she said 'shy' and he wondered what compelled him to be so stubbornly silent in spite of himself.

"I don't mind at all," he went on. "It's no trouble."

They were walking now out of the shrines. Water in the shallow pools rippled and the trees were stirred gently. Ahead where a stone battlement stood overlooking the city, a grey-skinned man in a twee jacket and tam 'o shanter hat reached a bony hand into his coat pocket and pulled a coin to put in a public telescope operated with quarters. He aimed the apparatus straight out, bizarrely, over the rooftops to the peach colored horizon.

"I suppose that's what old people do," she said, "just bring flowers to gravesides every week and walk along back home."

Her hands were behind her back. They passed out of the shrines and into the kicking city thoroughfare.


End file.
